Thank God they're back in the black

Live improvisation has ditched its daggy image, writes
Fiona Scott-Norman.

THERE are lots of ways to spend winter. Dressed in team colours,
existentialism and dim hopes at a St Kilda game, kvetching about
the electricity bill, or doorknocking your local neighbourhood to
remind young people to enrol to vote before they're disenfranchised
by cynical government legislation. Or you can liven things up with
the potent combination of warmth and terror - i.e. an open fire and
live improvisation - at the fifth season of Impro Melbourne's The
Impro Cave.

Impro is, to most people, a spectator sport up there with
bull-fighting and Paris Hilton baiting. Fascinating, gory and
you're pleased that it's not you in the ring/prison/sex video.
According to Lliam Amor, performing live impro tends to inspire
strong emotions.

"Most people find it really terrifying to step on stage with no
script, others find it really exhilarating. I say I'm not going to
do it for a while but then I always come back. Like any good drug
you can't let it go; with impro the first hit's free and then you
pay for it. And, of course, there's the craving for audience
approval."

Amor (who you'd recognise as the taxi driving dad in the
ever-running AAMI ad), has been improvising for 15 years and is one
of the passionate core members of Impro Melbourne the group which
presents Celebrity Theatresports, Smells Like A Song,
Theatresports, Late Nite Impro during the Comedy Festival,
Unforseen Stories, and impro classes.

After a few years in the doldrums, improv is on the up and up
again. Shows such as Thank God You're Here, Jim Henson's
Puppets Uncensored and Who's Line Is It Anyway?, and
local groups such as Spontaneous Broadway and Impro
Sundae, have re-piqued the interest of audiences who
evaporated after the glory years of the '80s, when Theatresports
was celebrity studded, on TV, and selling out Hamer Hall. Amor says
that that sort of cycle is inevitable.

"I think it reached its natural peak and that wasn't
sustainable. The company went bankrupt. But a small band of rebels
kept the dream alive and we started again. It's pretty exciting
now."

For Impro Melbourne, born from the ashes of Flying
Pig, starting again meant some serious retooling and moving on
from just playing Theatresports. The company went back to study
with Keith Johnstone, the man who is to improv what Einstein was to
weapons of mass destruction, and began experimenting with a mass of
other formats. A lot of these will be on show at The Impro Cave,
which opens on Sunday.

"We trial and remount stuff we've created ourselves, we rotate
the cast, and we do a different format every week. In the first
week we're doing The Hell Show, which is a format from LA
where all the players are in hell, and trying to win their way out
to purgatory by pleasing Satan, who's hosting the show."

Other formats include Guerilla Theatre, Harold, Couples, Uber
Improv, which celebrates all things German from bratwurst to
lederhosen, and H'bout This, where a player has to pitch an idea,
which can lead to all kinds of outcomes.

"One night someone pitched, 'Instead of seeing a bat, Batman
looked out of a window and saw . . .' and someone in the audience
called out 'seagull', so the scene was about Seagull-Man."

Amor says that the quality of contemporary impro is high, not
least due to ditching the competitive element.

"It took a while for us to realise that being competitive made
for bad impro. Players were undercutting each other and sabotaging
because they were trying to win. The whole idea underpinning Impro
Melbourne is making your partner look good. It sounds glib but if
you're on stage and you're trying to make the other person look
good, and vice versa, you become a very generous performer."

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